Would you rather fold your dishwater hands around a dry martini instead of a wet flounder, come the end of a long day?

If you recognize that paraphrased line, then I know you are a woman, and I know not to ask your age.

(ENLARGE)

'The I Hate to Cook Book' qualifies as one of the most delightful and influential pieces of food writing of the past 50 years.

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This witty nugget is the opening gambit of "The I Hate to Cook Book" by Peg Bracken. Written in 1960, this slim collection of recipes seems, by today's standards, a prime example of midcentury food skeeze. It wallows in cream of mushroom soup, tinned smoked oysters, store-bought desserts spiked with harsh booze and various perversions of cream cheese.

And yet "The I Hate to Cook Book" also qualifies as one of the most delightful and influential pieces of food writing of the past 50 years. Bracken's often hilarious commentary about the rules of entertaining, the language of food and the gender roles imposed on women stays fresh. Relevant, even.

I rediscovered the book in my mother-in-law's cookbook shelf. Her copy was split along its spine and heavily stained on Page 70, where the recipe for lasagne casserole headlined a company menu that included green salad with mandarin oranges, French bread and Irish coffee.

The latter, in fact, is the only finale Bracken served her Kennedy-era guests. She called it "the triple threat: coffee, dessert and liqueur all in one," adding that one is, thankfully, enough. "It serves as a pleasant punctuation mark to the evening, and, because it also has a slight somniferous effect on many people, your guests may eventually go home. Slainte! Not to mention bonsoir."

Beneath the chatty, breezy irony of Bracken's prose lies the irksome truth — for women of her generation, cooking conferred status. She came of age as a homemaker during the first wave of postwar food aspiration. It was a time when cookbooks and magazines depicted fulsome home-cooked meals in lavish, color-coordinated spreads. Bracken, in turn, moaned that she "wouldn't cook that much for a combination Thanksgiving and Irish wake."

The idea for the book came out of a luncheon with girlfriends ("We decided to pool our ignorance"), all of whom regarded cooking as a chore and entertaining as something that demanded timesaving strategies rather than grandiose ideas.

This lady clearly had nothing in common with her contemporary Julia Child. (Well, perhaps they share a tendency to nip at the bottle of sherry in the pantry, which is why Bracken recommends stocking undrinkable salted cooking sherry. You'll need it come bisque time!)

A chapter titled "Good Cooksmanship" advises readers on how to discuss cooking to make it look like you really care: Instead of "cold," use the word "chilled"; instead of "top with bacon," say "garnish with crispy bacon curls."

She may have talked the talk, but Bracken clearly hated the growing cult of food snobbery spreading among the middle class. "You watch your friends redoing their kitchens and hoarding their pennies for glamorous cooking equipment and new cookbooks called 'Eggplant Comes to the Party' or 'Let's Waltz Into the Kitchen,' and presently you begin to feel un-American."

Don't, said Bracken. Empower yourself to spend as little time as possible cooking the food you find at least palatable. But also understand the exchange of social currency that takes place around the table.

When the "haute cuisine crowd" comes over, serve plain vegetables as a side dish, dressed with butter, salt and pepper — always making sure the latter is coarse ground "because a lot of people feel that anything peppered should look as though it had been fished out of a gravel pit."

At a cocktail party, always serve soup on the sideboard, with a wink to your women guests. They'll see to it that their husbands inhale two or three cups, and then they won't need to prepare dinner afterward. "Your bread may come back gorgeously buttered."

Volunteer friends to bring the main course to a potluck with a shallow compliment ("Ethel, would you make that marvelous goulash of yours?") and then promise to bring your "delectable" Left Bank French Loaves — a kind of garlic bread made with onion soup mix and butter slathered on baguettes.

For a ladies' luncheon, Bracken wrote, you should prepare a light fruit dessert to appease dieters, but also set out what she calls "oddments" — store-bought chocolates, cookies and such that appease those with a sweet tooth but occasion no offense to the hostess if declined. She used social convention to reduce her own stress as a hostess.

Bracken saw no reason to ignore prepared desserts, mixes or any convenience food that would keep her out of the kitchen. That strange (now, almost vestigial) gourmet shelf in the supermarket was the locus of her party planning. There, she found smoked oysters to tuck inside refrigerated biscuit dough and tinned artichokes to ennoble chipped beef for company.

Hers was a frugal voice that saw no need to waste money on expensive almonds for green beans, which will still taste like green beans in the end. But she also encouraged women to throw away leftovers rather than put time or effort in the losing prospect of renewed palatability.

Bracken worked full time as an advertising executive — a fact she never mentions in the book. She was both Darrin and Samantha Stevens. Even as a working woman of her era, she still had to do all the cooking and cleaning. ("The I Hate to Housekeep Book" soon followed.) She accepted this onus with great good humor, even if she didn't particularly like it.

Looking through "The I Hate to Cook Book" and its headlong dive into the world of convenience foods, it would be easy enough to see this book as the beginning of the end. Bracken paved the way for such modern-day horrors as "The Dinner Doctor" and the whole "semi-homemade" enterprise.

But Peg Bracken was more than her generation's Sandra Lee. She was also its Jane Austen.

Peg Bracken's Pots de Chocolate
6 to 8 servings

Hands on: 5 minutes
Total time: 4 to 6 hours

Like many quick desserts in the Peg Bracken repertoire, this one combines 5 minutes of your time and a hefty shot of booze into something that will make your dinner guests quite happy. It was originally published in the "Appendix to The I Hate to Cook Book" — a follow-up to the original.

1 1/4 cups light cream, scalded
1 cup chocolate chips
2 egg yolks (look for pasteurized eggs)
1 tablespoon brandy

In blender, place cream, chocolate chips, egg yolks and brandy. Run "until the racket stops." Pour into attractive serving cups and refrigerate for 4 to 6 hours.

Per serving (based on 6): 257 calories (percent of calories from fat, 66), 3 grams protein, 20 grams carbohydrates, 2 grams fiber, 20 grams fat (12 grams saturated), 104 milligrams cholesterol, 25 milligrams sodium.